| Crude |
[May. 13th, 2008|08:06 am] |
If you've been looking for a spot to get short crude, now might be a good time. Bearish island reversal, if you're into technical analysis...
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| Changes are afoot at the circle mk. |
[Jun. 4th, 2007|09:08 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | life, poker, trading | ] |
| [ | mood |
| |  excited | ] |
| [ | music |
| | m. ward - chinese translation | ] |
Most of you who will read this are people I talk to on a semi-regular basis, and therefore this won't be terribly enlightening. I do feel, however, that I should probably document the recent happenings in my life in some manner (if only for myself to come back to at a later date).
In short, I decided to leave my company after having been there for 3 years. When I started at BWT (right out of college), it was a small company with fewer than 20 traders. After 2 years, it had grown to almost 100 traders and probably 50+ tech staff. Then, at the beginning of this calendar year, it was announced that a merger was imminent and lay-offs (plus an overhaul of the business model) would ensue. With 100 traders, we essentially had a lot of people pointing at the same things, doing very high volume and very high frequency. The new business model would require far fewer traders, each of whom would 'carry more of the load'. I survived all of these cuts (down to ~30 traders), despite feeling almost certain (did I say 90%, Pete?) that I was going get axed at the end of March (end of Q1). After March came and went, I felt my position was relatively secure. This feeling continued until Tuesday, May 22nd, when I was pulled into a meeting with a number of other traders.
We were told that
A) The merger will happen within the next 6 months, at which time everyone excepting the partners will be let go (I'm not a partner).
B) Our deal will be changed, giving each trader a lower % of their own profits, (this is something of a wash, due to each person trading higher volume and therefore making more net $ each day) but it still adds up to each individual accepting more risk and less % reward.
C) I hold my own personal capital that I have built up over the past 3 years which stays at the firm as my "in case shit" money (as in, in case I personally lose $80k in a day, the firm debits that loss from my own 'holdback', as it's called, as a way to mitigate the entire company's risk and I just work it back up until the loss is erased in my own account. Everything we trade is highly leveraged, and therefore when losses pile up, they tend to do so across the board, and if every trader has an insurance policy, it basically helps everyone. But this is my money. I am the only one who can do something dumb and lose it. If the firm blows out, my money is still safe because I am not a partner. The partners (there are 10 of them) also each keep a large amount of personal capital at the firm. This is the money that allows the company to borrow from banks and hold gigantic positions for long periods of time. If anyone at the company were to do something stupid (like lose $100 million) and blow the firm out, the partners would lose a share of their money. They are paid quite well for accepting this risk, however - to the tune of 50% of the profits of every trader in the firm. On May 22nd, we were told that now our own personal holdbacks would be at risk in the event that the firm loses money. Apparently the partners decided they aren't comfortable with the amount of risk they're now assuming and want every trader to accept partner risk without accepting partner rewards.
It's fairly obvious that this is their way of letting people go without actually letting people go; you'd have to be retarded to stay under these circumstances. I am not about to let some mouthbreathing trader (and yes we had several) who has absolutely no business slinging 500 lots of cash lose my blah blah blah hard earned money. But with the merger happening in the next 6 months anyway, it felt like this presented the perfect timing for me to leave. I finished out the month. (Others did the same).
Now I get to take the summer off and chill out for a while. I have worked almost non-stop 70-80 hour weeks for the past 3 years, suffered burn-out 4 or 5 times, made some money, learned a lot, but maybe lost some perspective as well. I'm going to take some time to reconnect with friends I've neglected, and I'm going to do some traveling.
My first stop will be Vegas and the WSOP. I'll be leaving this Friday, June 8th, and I don't know exactly when I'll be coming back to Chicago, but it will probably be after the main event. I'll be staying in a condo in Henderson with ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) billybizzle and summerofsumner. I have neither delusions nor intentions of becoming a full-time poker player, but it is something that I enjoy very much that I've had some success with in limited play thus far. I'm looking at this trip as mostly a vacation. I hope to do more partying/sitting by the pool/de-stressing than poker playing. I will not be direct-buying 40 1000+ entrant MTTs or anything. I will probably play a few of the wsop prelims that I think represent good value, and then I imagine we will spend a fair amount of time at both the Venetian and the Bellagio for their MTT series, respectively. So having said that... Prock, Kaplan, Pelton, Kyle - drinks?
After Vegas, I may go to Europe for a while. I had the pleasure of traveling through Italy, Austria, Germany, France, and England during the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college, and I've been itching to get back ever since I began working. It's hard to get away from the desk when there's money to be made....
I will also finally have the time to focus some energy properly on music, which is probably my true passion. I look forward to finishing the will/fill album with John, and hopefully we'll start playing some shows. I miss playing live so so badly.
Then when the leaves start to change, I'm guessing I will go trade somewhere else. I have a lot of connections now in the business and should have no trouble finding something. If I'm going to stay in this industry forever, I'll probably have to go through NYC at some point, so that could be the next logical step.
To any of you guys who are going to be in Vegas in June/July, feel free to drop me a line. |
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